


sweet-talking, night-walking games

by connorswhisk



Series: losers/lovers [2]
Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Character Study, F/M, also there is so much bevchie in this i love it, alvin and tom are so so bad in this fic but i'm just telling it like it is, and ben loves bev so fucking much like bitch me too the fuck, bev deserves the world she really does
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 19:28:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20822585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/connorswhisk/pseuds/connorswhisk
Summary: ~~She loves these guys. Even when she has to go home and face her father, or go into town and face the rumors, she feels better about all of it now. Because she has people in her corner now, people to look forward to seeing every day. Friends to laugh with, and see movies with, and swim in the quarry with. Friends to share stories with, and smoke with, and coast around town with.Because that’s all Beverly Marsh has ever wanted, really.Friends.~~





	sweet-talking, night-walking games

**Author's Note:**

> this timeline is all over the place but honestly i can't bring myself to care
> 
> title taken from queen bitch by david bowie

Elfrida Marsh dies when Beverly is six years old.

Mommy was sick, or at least that’s what Daddy says. She was sick, with an itch in her head that wouldn’t go away, no matter how much she’d tried to block it out with booze and cigarettes. She was sick, that’s what the people in town whisper behind their hands when Beverly goes walking down the street with her daddy.

She was sick, Daddy tells her, fingers gripping tight and leaving long, dark bruises on her pale skin, because she couldn’t stand having Beverly as her daughter.

“No, Daddy,” Beverly whimpers, leaning away from the hate in his eyes and the beer on his breath. “She loved me, she loved - _please stop, Daddy, you’re hurting me._”

“She didn’t _love_ you,” Daddy snarls, hold on her arm only getting tighter. “Why would she love _you? _She was _embarrassed, _she was _embarrassed_ to be your mother. That’s why she did what she did. It’s your fault, Bevvie. _It’s all your fault._”

“No,” Beverly sobs, the tears running hot down her face now, but deep inside, she thinks it might be true. Because Beverly is not a perfect child, and even if her mommy pretended to like her, she probably didn’t. Not really. Not if Daddy says she didn’t.

Her father finally releases her, flopping down into his easy chair and opening another can, his eyes wet and bloodshot, leaving Beverly to rub her arm and slink quietly off to her room.

She almost gets away with it.

“Bevvie.”

She turns slowly. “Yes, Daddy?”

He beckons to her. She makes her way across the room, arms folded in front of her, still trailing her fingers down the aching part of her arm. He reaches out near her face, and for a brief moment Beverly thinks he’s going to _hit_ her, and she flinches.

He tugs at one of the auburn curls lying on her shoulder.

“She didn’t love you,” Daddy whispers. “But I do. Do you love me?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“_Say you love me, Bevvie._”

“I love you, Daddy.”

“Good.” He pulls her into his chest, gently stroking her back. She buries her face in his neck and tries not to cry anymore. “And you’ll keep loving me, Bevvie, because if you don’t, I’ll get sick like Mommy did. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

An almost imperceptible shake of the head.

“You’ll keep loving me, because you’re Daddy’s little girl, aren’t you, Bevvie?”

“Yes,” Beverly whispers, vision foggy due to unshed tears threatening to fall. Teasing her, just on the brink of overflowing past her eyelids, catching on her lashes.

“_I’m your little girl, Daddy._”

The thing is, Beverly thinks, that Daddy wasn’t like this before.

Well, no. That’s a lie. He _was _like this before, it just wasn’t this bad. Not like it is now that Mommy’s gone.

When Mommy was still alive, Daddy could be mean, but he could still be nice. He would take Beverly out for ice cream, or go in the side yard with her for a game of catch. _It would be better if you were a boy, _he’d used to say. _Boys are better at catching and throwing things. Girls aren’t good for anything but fucking and cooking. _Beverly hadn’t completely understood what he’d meant (_fucking_ was probably what Mommy and Daddy did at night with the bedroom door closed and the bedsprings squeaking), but she’d understood something then. Her father had wanted a son, and he hadn’t gotten one.

Though, if he really didn’t like Beverly because she was a girl, and she couldn’t throw and catch like a boy could, why was he playing with her at all? Her daddy loved her, she‘d decided, because he played with her even if she wasn’t what he wished she could be.

A few times in the past, Beverly had wondered if she would have a little sibling someday. A brother this time, like Daddy wanted, and he could play catch with him in the yard like a boy was supposed to do with his father.

But then Daddy probably wouldn’t play catch with _her_, anymore. Beverly hadn’t been sure.

She’d asked once. “Mommy, am I ever going to have a little brother?” Mommy had smiled slightly, wincing a little at the strain it had put on her recently split lip, and had told her: “Oh, sweetie. I don’t think so. No, I don’t think so.”

“Why?” Beverly had been foolish enough to ask. Mommy had groaned softly, and only then had Beverly realized she’d been trying to warn her to drop the subject.

“What do you mean ‘_why?’_” Daddy had growled from his spot at the kitchen table, scowling over the top of his morning paper at Beverly. “You think we can afford another goddamn mouth to feed in this hellhole, Bevvie? What, do you think we’re fucking made of money?”

“Alvin, please,” Mommy had sighed, and then Daddy had stood up.

“_‘Alvin, please?’ ‘Alvin, please,’ WHAT?_” he’d yelled, and Mommy had turned to Beverly and mouthed ‘Go’ frantically, terror in her eyes. Beverly had dashed into the hall to lock herself in her room, but not before she heard the tell-tale _smack_ of flesh against flesh, and the howls of a wounded woman floating down the hall after her, seeping under her bedroom door, filling Beverly’s ears until it was all she could hear.

But Daddy had loved them. Beverly thought that probably all men beat their wives behind closed doors. It was nothing to worry about. If Daddy truly hated her and Mommy, then why did he still come home to them every day? Why hadn’t he just left town?

Beverly had tried to banish the thought from her mind, but it got through anyway.

_What if the man you marry beats you, too?_

_(Maybe that’s just how it would have to be.)_

Daddy doesn’t play catch with her anymore, or take her to the ice cream shop. Not since Mommy died. He comes home every day after work, grabs a cold beer, sits in his chair, watches the tube, and waits for Beverly to get home from school so she can cook him his TV dinner and bring him another Miller Lite. Beverly misses it. She misses throwing the football with Daddy. Sure, he had been mean sometimes, and he’d hurt Mommy, and sometimes had hurt Beverly too, but nothing’s really changed there, right? Just because Beverly is the only one left doesn’t mean he loves her any less. And he _says _he loves her, so it must be true.

But sometimes, when Beverly’s lying in bed at night, listening to the Milford’s fight upstairs and her father sob drunkenly from down the hallway, she gets a little mad.

And she thinks, just before she drifts off into a restless sleep: _Why did you have to leave us, Mommy?_

_Was it really my fault?_

_Why did you do it?_

_Why did you leave us?_

_Why did you leave _me_?_

_Why did you leave me here with _him?

Third grade is steadily becoming Beverly’s worst school year yet. This is really saying something, because ever since kindergarten, it’s been pretty bad. The taunting and teasing has been relentless, never-ending, and almost everyone does it.

Beverly just can’t seem to make friends. She’ll talk to new kids, get to know them, smile sweetly and sit with them at lunch, but the second Greta Keene or one of her buddies walks over and makes some back-handed comment about how Beverly’s mom killed herself, and that her dad is a drunk who can barely make enough money to keep the two of them afloat, the new kid will edge away from her, disgusted, and will eventually move to sit with other people. People who don’t have dead moms and drunk dads and a messed up home life.

Beverly used to dream about making friends. She’d made a few in primary school, but they didn’t stick around. And no one is exactly lining up and volunteering to wear a matching friendship bracelet with her.

Beverly mostly keeps to herself, quietly, softly, even though quiet and soft is never what she’s wanted to be. When she makes herself small, it reminds her of how she acts when Daddy’s in one of his moods. Ever since he got laid off at the butcher’s shop, they’ve been coming on more and more frequently. It’s hurricane season at the Marsh household. Hurricane Alvin.

Beverly would laugh at that, but it isn’t funny.

“Move _over, _Bevvie Beaver,” Jane Simmons hisses, pushing Beverly’s backpack to the side and slamming her tray down in front of Beverly’s own. “We want to sit here.”

“I was here first,” Beverly says, retort fire on her lips. “Move somewhere else, Jane, just like your mom moves from guy to guy behind your dad’s back like she’s a city bus.”

Jane’s eyes grow wide, a sneer on her lips. “_You - _“ she starts, but Greta shoves her aside.

“Shut up, both of you. God, you’re annoying, Jane,” she says, sitting down with the rest of her little group. “And move over, Sewer-ly, we’re sitting here, don’t you know, and I don’t want to throw up my lunch all over you because of your sewer stench.”

“I don’t know, Greta,” Beverly bites back, moving her lunch all the same, because she knows a losing battle when she sees one. “I think your dress would actually look _better _covered in meatloaf-barf. It would really bring out the murky color of your eyes.” She slams her tray down and starts to pick at her creamed corn, planning on blocking the other girls out of her thoughts entirely.

Greta sticks out her tongue at Beverly, because she’s nine years old, and then turns to her girlfriends. “Sooooo, who’s gonna try out for the school play?”

“Ohhh, me! I want to,” Isabelle Wright chirps. She twirls a lock of her hair around her finger. “Imagine if I was the female lead, and Travis Porter was the male lead. _So _totally _dreamy_.” The other girls coo and agree, giggling all sugary-sweet and disgusting.

“Yeah, that would be pretty cool,” Greta says. And, to everyone’s surprise, she shoots a glance at Beverly.

“What about _you,_ Bevvie Beaver?” she asks, smacking her bright pink Bazooka Bubblegum. “You think you’re such hot stuff, all high and mighty and better than everyone else. _You _should audition.”

Maggie Ralston shrieks with laughter. “_Puh-lease_,” she says, high-pitched cackles grating across Beverly’s skin. “She’d make a complete fool of herself. It would be _so _embarrassing. As if she needs _more _shame on her family.”

And somehow, this is what makes Beverly snap. She flips her hair back over her shoulders.

“You know what, Greta? I think that’s a great idea. I _will _try out for the school play, and I will totally _smoke _all of you prissy little _bitches_.”

With that, Beverly picks up her bag, dumps her food in the trash, and leaves for the library, ignoring the astonished gasps and the giggling behind her.

Well, _damn_.

Now Beverly actually has to _audition_.

So she does. And it’s honestly not so bad. It isn’t particularly challenging for her (not like it’s difficult material to work with), and she’s surprised to find that the male lead is not, in fact, Travis Porter, but is actually Bill Denbrough.

She’s even more shocked when she finds out who the female lead is.

“It’s not _fair, _Ms. Ferguson,” Greta whines, trailing after the music teacher like a lost puppy. “We can’t have a loser girl and a stuttering boy for our main characters. We’ll look like a _joke. _People will totally _cry_ laughing.”

“Hush, child,” Ms. Ferguson says sternly. “Before I give you something to cry about.”

Beverly sends a smirk in Greta’s direction, and that is the end of that.

  
Beverly Marsh is in the play, and so is Bill Denbrough, and even though Beverly had never cared much before, suddenly Bill is so much more _interesting._

She’d always thought he was cute, sure, because he _is._ Even Isabelle Wright, who has a crush on almost every boy in the school, mourns, because if it weren’t for the stutter, he’d be “perfect boyfriend material.” Beverly had admired Bill from afar, but now that she’s actually getting to know him better, he’s so _different._

He’s sweet, sweeter than Beverly had thought, and very kind. He always smiles encouragingly if Beverly forgets part of her monologue during practice, and tells her how well she did whenever they finish a rehearsal. Beverly, in return, waits patiently while he stammers through his lines. She hardly notices the stutter at all, because having a stutter doesn’t make Bill weird. It just makes him different from the rest.

Beverly is different from the rest, too.

She finds herself thinking about Bill at night in bed, and whenever she goes into the cafeteria for a rehearsal, she feels her heart racing, and hopes she isn’t blushing. She’s never had a crush before, and has no idea what to do with these feelings, but she hopes she isn’t making things too obvious, because that would be embarrassing. But even having to deal with Greta and her friends at practice isn’t so bad, because she gets to see Bill.

The weird thing is, they don’t hang out outside of play practice. At the end of the day, Beverly goes one way, towards her apartment, and Bill goes another, to grab his bike and head home with his friends. Beverly knows his friends, or rather, she knows of them, and is decidedly jealous of them. Eddie Kaspbrak, Stanley Uris, and Richie Tozier. They all seem nice, and Richie’s pretty funny, but something stops Beverly from trying to make friends with them. She isn’t sure what it is, but she thinks that maybe Bill is feeling the same way about her.

Beverly mentions the play to her dad in passing. She doesn’t mention Bill. He rolls his eyes and says that he’s working late that night before Beverly even tells him the date of the show. She decides not to push it any further. She’s finally getting rid of her latest, particularly nasty black eye, and she doesn’t need anymore bruises to give Ms. Ferguson and her makeup kit a conniption on the night of the play.

The play comes. There’s a lot more people than Beverly had thought there would be. Her dress is torn at the hem, and someone is mending it as she peeks through the curtain, but she isn’t nervous. She sneaks a glance over at Bill, and smiles. He smiles back.

No one ever smiles at her like that.

The show is really good. Like, really good, better than it’s ever been in rehearsals. Beverly knows that it probably isn’t _that _great, because it’s a _third-grade play, _for crying out loud, but it _feels _great.

And then Bill kisses her, and it’s nothing like Beverly has ever known before.

She feels like a cloud. Like she could just float up, up, up, and blow away. Or maybe she wouldn’t move, and she’d just hang there forever.

Bill smiles his sweet smile at her once they stop kissing, and as the curtains lower and the audience applauds, Beverly smiles back. She walks off the stage feeling happier than she has in a long time.

The shocked and disgusted looks on Greta and Co’s faces help, too.

Bill is immediately swarmed by his friends and family, including an adorable little boy who must be his brother. Beverly allows herself to stare longingly at them for only five seconds, before she changes out of her costume, thanks Ms. Ferguson, and walks home.

She’d already scanned the crowd for any familiar faces, and Alvin Marsh had not been one of them.

She gets home and he’s asleep in his chair, head drooping onto his chest, drool dribbling from the corner of his mouth onto his shirt. There’s a half-empty beer can slipping out of his hand, and the remnants of somewhat overly-crispy leftover spaghetti on the tray in front of him. Beverly would have once looked upon this scene and felt sympathy, would have felt sorry for her dad.

Now, he just looks pathetic.

Beverly quietly cleans up after him. Switches the TV off, throws out the food, carefully takes the can from him and chugs the rest of the lukewarm liquid before throwing it out. She spreads a blanket over his body, cautious in case he wakes up.

As she turns out the light, Beverly decides right then and there that she hates her father, no matter if it kills him or not.

She shuts herself in her room, crawls into bed, and falls asleep without eating dinner, dreams of a boy with red hair kissing her, and his friends smiling at her welcomingly.

Because in her dreams, they’re her friends, too.

Eleven is not a good age for Beverly. It’s actually the worst age, or at least, it’s the worst age she’s experienced so far.

Last year, in fifth grade, a lady had come to class to lecture the girls about how their bodies were changing. She had mostly talked about stuff that Beverly already knew about, periods and sex and breast growth and pregnancy and how you should never be that, but the woman had also said something that had stood out to Beverly more than anything else: That boys would start noticing these changes, too.

“Oh, yes, they’ll notice,” the woman had said, in response to the giggles that had passed around the classroom. “They’re going through changes, too. Just remember: Don’t do anything with a boy that you don’t want to do.”

Beverly had left school with a pit in her stomach.

Of course they were going to notice. Daddy had already noticed, and he wouldn’t leave it alone. The last thing she needed was for the other boys to say things, too.

Now, at eleven years old, deep into her sixth grade year, Beverly is getting _noticed_, and it’s even worse than she could have imagined. The practically innocent “Bevvie Beaver” has been traded out for “Beaverly,” hissed in Beverly’s direction in the hallways and often accompanied with a pinch on the arm. On the first day of school, the word _slut _had fallen out of Greta Keene’s mouth, and was soon spread around like wildfire, along with others.

_Slut._

_Whore._

_Tramp._

_Beaverly._

_Easy. So easy._

_She’ll do it for free. All you gotta do is ask her nicely._

Beverly often wonders if they remember her real name. Or if they ever knew it at all.

And the boys join in, too, mocking and pulling at Beverly’s ponytail, asking if she’ll blow them under the bleachers or go for a quickie in the maintenance closet with them. It’s worse, when they do it. Before, in elementary school, Beverly had only been teased by the girls. Now, the boys do it too.

Everyone does.

Well, not everyone. Bill Denbrough and his friends never do. Beverly likes that.

But Greta, and Jane, and Maggie, and Isabelle, and Henry Bowers and his gang...they don’t stop. Beverly fears they might _never _stop, and that she’ll be caught in this loop forever.

Yet somehow school is still better than home.

Because Daddy is at home.

Here is how an average evening at the Marsh household will progress now:

He sneers at her when she comes home from school. She nods and keeps silent, not daring to step out of line. She fetches him a beer. He grabs her arm if she screws up somehow, fingers burning into her skin. He releases her, grumbling about how she’s a waste of space. She goes to her room and does her homework, fighting the tears threatening to spill, and listens quietly to the radio. She cooks him dinner, always makes his before she makes her own. He eats in his chair, eyes never leaving the TV. She sits at the table and eats, though she rarely has an appetite. He says something about hearing what they say about Beverly while in town, asks her if that’s true. She says no, it’s not, no sir. He gets up, asks her if she’s still Daddy’s little girl. She says she is, because there’s no one else who wants her. He slaps her, or kicks at her, or something like that, hard enough to bruise. Maybe he pulls out his belt. She sobs and he sits back down, and then she goes to bed.

And that’s just on school days. Weekends, Beverly stays outside, though she’s got nowhere to go.

It’s Hell. And sometimes, it’s worse.

She hears gross comments at school, sure. But the shit she hears from her dad...

_That shirt shows too much skin, Bevvie. Wouldn’t want to give any boys the wrong idea._

and

_Keep your hair back when I’m talking to you. I want to see your eyes._

or

_Your tits are getting big, Bevvie-girl. Better buy a bra, or someone might not be able to control himself._

and, worst of all,

_You remind me of your mother in that dress._

_Too bad you killed her._

Too bad.

It’s around this time that Beverly has her first smoke. And it’s a few months afterwards when she decides she’s not going to stop.

She hadn’t planned it, or even really thought about it. She’d just gone into the drug store one day for tampons (avoiding Greta and ignoring Mr. Keene’s _Well, _hello_ there, Beverly.) _and had walked out with two boxes of those and a package of Slims.

The first time Beverly had tried a cigarette, she’d almost vomited. She’d certainly coughed up a storm.

Now, it comes as naturally as taking a breath. And she does it all the time. Before school, in between classes, during classes, after school, on the fire escape of her apartment, outside her bedroom window, around back of the Aladdin. She doesn’t care if people see her. It isn’t their business, anyway.

It’s on one of her smoke breaks during which she’s ditching English that she meets someone who eventually becomes one of her closest friends, but not for a few more years.

Beverly steps along the east wall of the building, one of her best spots, making sure that the door shuts quietly behind her before pulling out her lighter.

It’s then that she realizes she isn’t alone.

From her peripherals she sees a dark shape, and jumps a little, because at first she thinks it’s a teacher. Closer examination tells her that it’s Richie Tozier, sitting against the wall, head in between his knees. His glasses lie, lenses dirty and cracked, on the ground next to him, and he’s...

Crying?

“Hey,” Beverly says. Richie jolts, head shooting up, and fumbles for his glasses before jamming them unceremoniously on his face.

“Miz Marsh!” he shouts, his voice breaking a little. “What’s a little lady such as yourself doin’ out here?”

“Are you crying?” Beverly asks. She hopes she doesn’t sound too blunt.

“What?” Richie asks, scrubbing at his face. “No, I’m not, I’m not crying. Just got some dirt in my eyes, that’s all. Why - Why would I be crying? Boys don’t cry, wocka, wocka, wocka.”

Beverly raises an eyebrow at Richie, whose nose is leaking snot and whose eyes are very visibly red. She extends an arm.

“Care for a smoke?” she offers. Richie blinks. He nods slowly.

Beverly slides down in the grass next to him and hands him a cigarette, lighting it, and then her own. She can tell Richie’s smoked before, because he doesn’t cough, not even a little.

“So, what’s up?” she asks. Richie gives her a puzzled look.

“Why are you out here?” Beverly elaborates. Richie shrugs.

“I don’t know, just didn’t feel like showing up to math, I guess. We have a test, you know, and I don’t exactly feel like taking it.” It’s a lie, and not a very good one.

“Why are _you_ out here, Miz Marsh?” Richie asks, and Beverly likes that he doesn’t call her any of her usual nicknames.

“Needed a break,” she says, taking a drag of her cigarette.

“I hear ya,” Richie agrees, staring at the ground.

And then he says:

“Do you ever feel weird?”

Beverly looks at him quizzically. He looks serious, for once, like he’s desperate for an answer.

“What do you mean, ‘weird?’”

“You know, just...like some part of you is totally fucked up. Like something inside you is trying to get out, and if you let it, it’d kill you, and everyone would hate you,” Richie explains, not meeting Beverly’s eyes.

“Everyone already hates me,” she replies, unsure of what to say.

“I don’t hate you,” Richie says, and Beverly understands that he’s telling the truth. “But do you ever feel like that?”

“Yeah. I do,” Beverly says, because she knows all too well how he’s feeling. She wonders what possible reason Richie could have for feeling that way. He doesn’t live the same life as Beverly. He has two parents, and enough money to get by, and he has friends who like him, even when he annoys them. Beverly doesn’t have that.

But, she supposes, everybody has their demons. And she isn’t Richie Tozier. She wouldn’t know his.

They sit in silence, smoking until the bell rings for fifth period. Richie stands, and offers a hand to help Beverly up. Beverly takes it.

“Well, I suppose this is where we part ways, Bevvie,” he says. Beverly winces involuntarily.

Richie frowns. “What, do you not like being called that? How about something different, like, ‘Bevvie-from-the-levee?’”

“Why a levee?” Beverly asks.

“Because you live on one.”

“I don’t,” Beverly says. “But I like the name, Richie-from-the-ditchie.”

Richie’s eyes widen. “A good one!” he yells, grinning. “Bevvie-from-the-levee gets off a good one.”

Beverly laughs. “I’ll see you around?” she asks.

“Sure fuckin’ thing,” Richie says, winking. “Lemme know if you ever need a smoking buddy again.”

“Will do.”

But Beverly never finds Richie in the spot again after that.

It’s ok, though. She isn’t mad. She understands. Somehow.

  
At thirteen, Beverly is finally happy with her life, or at least a little bit. Her father hasn’t changed, the teasing hasn’t stopped (and probably never will), and Beverly’s own insecurities and self-hatred keep her up late into the night. But school’s out for summer, and with the warm weather comes the feeling of freedom, a sense of power, a sense of life.

And, for the first time in Beverly’s life, summer comes with _friends._

She’d felt something coming, but hadn’t known it would be this. And, sure, the fact that she’s spending her time with a group of boys is probably doing _wonders_ for her reputation, but Beverly is too ecstatic to care. She’s finally found the people that she belongs with, and she’s grateful for it.

She’s friends with Bill, and she’s a little embarrassed when she finds that she’s still crushing on him. It’s a little bit different, a little bit more important now that they’re teens, and often she’ll catch Bill staring at her and she’ll wonder if he feels the same. It’s not important to her, whether she has a boyfriend or not, at least not right now, and if she _did _go out with Bill, it wouldn’t stop the slut-rumors.

But Bill is chivalrous, and polite, and dedicated, and he’s everything a good person is meant to be. Beverly can’t help it if she admires those things about him. Coupled with the fact that he’s got dreamy eyes and nice hair (God, she sounds so _cheesy_), and she’s totally gone for him.

But it’s not that easy. Nothing in Beverly’s life is. Because Bill is there, and her feelings for him are definitely real. But.

Ben is there, too.

Ben, she hadn’t even expected. It’s not like she knew he was an option, or even knew who he was, because he’s the new kid on the block (Bev had told him that that was what he was and he’d grinned sheepishly). And by all means, she shouldn’t like him the way she does (Daddy often remarks that _fat people are the scum of the earth, Bevvie. They’re lazy fucks who don’t work for nothing. _But Ben isn’t lazy, in fact, he’s anything _but _that), but she _does._

With Ben, it’s different. Her feelings for Bill are so planned, so boy-meets-girl. They’re there, they’re strong. But where Bill is bright lights and daydreams and the heat of the moment, Ben is the opposite. He’s light, and warmth, and a kind smile, and soft eyes, and he’s just so caring for everyone he meets that Bev simply _has _to feel the way she does.

“Your hair,” Ben says at the quarry, cheeks turning a rosy pink. “It looks nice.” And Beverly’s heart is racing faster than she thought it ever could.

_God._

And then there’s Richie, and sweet Jesus, Bev is grateful he’s around in her life again. Because Bill is a leader, and Ben is a thinker, and Eddie’s brave. Stan’s calculating, and Mike’s encouraging, and Bev loves all those things, but Richie?

Richie _gets it._

There’s just something about the pair of them that has them working in perfect harmony together. Ever since the start of the summer, they’ve taken up smoking together again, sometimes just the two of them, sometimes joined by Bill or Stan. But Beverly usually likes it better when it’s just her and Rich, because he understands her more than anyone else does, maybe more than anyone else ever could.

She doesn’t know why, and she’s pretty sure Richie would say the same. They’re just a pair of jokers who’d rather play endless rounds of Street Fighter than deal with being at home, and they’ve both got their own personal problems that they mask with other emotions. They don’t talk a lot about all that deep shit, but Richie’s mentioned how his parents ignore him (“Honestly, I think they wanted a girl. Too bad for them, they’re stuck with this hilarious motherfucker.”), trying to jokingly pass it off as no big deal, and Bev knows that Richie hasn’t missed the welts on her arms, and the way she flinches if he gets too close too fast.

Beverly doesn’t tell Richie everything, even when they do talk about it. And she knows Richie’s keeping his own shit personal, too. Maybe someday they can sit down and work through it together. Make a night of it. Save the date for Bevvie-levee and Richie-ditchie’s Personal Problems Talk Show! Tissues not provided. Self-doubt in abundance.

In the meantime though, they can smoke Winstons and listen to the radio and crack jokes about all kinds of things. They’ve got plenty of time before they have to get serious. All the time in the world.

Out of all of Bev’s new friends, she thinks the most truly good of them all is Mike. She really couldn’t tell you why, not that she would have to. Spend thirty minutes with him and you’d be able to see for yourself, with his helpfulness and attitude that is so close, so sweet, that Beverly wishes...Well. She doesn’t_ know _what she wishes.

Except, she sort of does. She wishes Mike were happy, in the same way that he makes Bev feel. Because God knows he deserves it. They’ve all got their issues, but Mike’s is something that no one else can relate to. The rest of the Losers Club (as they’ve been unceremoniously, but unanimously dubbed) are white: they don’t go through what Mike does on a daily basis, in this town that hates him, hates his parents, hates anyone like him, even though it’s nineteen-_fucking_-eighty, and they should be past this by now. They should’ve been past this a long time ago.

And yet, through it all, Mike is still _good. _Even when people whisper about him when he turns his back, he still greets them politely with a smile on his face. It’s unfair, how this boy has been through so much and hardly gets anything in return. But he smiles through it all.

Beverly thinks she should write a book all about The Inherent Goodness of Mike Hanlon.

She also thinks that when she and Richie have their talk, Mike should be there too.

Maybe they all should.

Eddie is small, and feisty, and anxious, and loud, and Bev loves him, she really does. He’s honestly the brother she’s never had, and she regrets not getting to know him sooner. Before she’d become his friend, she’d thought he was weird. He’s a clean freak, he’s got asthma, he has a note permanently excusing himself from gym, and he gets called _gay _and _fairy_ almost as often as Beverly gets called _Beaverly._ And Bev knows that before they’d really gotten to know each other, Eddie had probably thought she was a slut, because that’s what everyone thinks. And she knows for a fact that Eddie’s mother believes all those things, because she shoots Bev dirty glances when she runs into her at the drug store. By all evidence, Beverly and Eddie should not be friends. They’re not wired to be.

But they _are_, and it’s fucking awesome. Eddie laughs at Bev’s jokes, and picks on Richie with her, and warns her about mosquitoes, because they carry deadly viruses, don’t you know, and he really, really is so much like a brother to her that Beverly knows he’s been a missing piece from her whole life.

They all have been, all of them. Beverly is so glad they’re here.

And then there’s Stanley.

Bev hadn’t been so sure of him at first, and she knows Stan had felt the same about her. Beverly knew him the least out of all of Bill’s friends, and had originally thought that he had been a Debbie-Downer, a fun-hater. He’d been skeptical of Bev because of all the rumors surrounding her, and when they’d first started hanging out, he’d been cold to her, and she hadn’t been that nice in return.

But then,

“Do you want me to walk you home?” Stan had asked. “It’s getting pretty dark.”

Beverly had been so surprised she’d said yes without a second thought. They’d said goodbye to the others and set off walking their bikes down the road as the sun sank below the horizon.

“Your house is in the other direction,” Bev had pointed out, and Stanley had shrugged.

“I don’t mind,” he’d said. “You shouldn’t have to walk home alone.”

And after a while, Bev had asked: “Why are you being so nice to me?”

Stan had grimaced slightly, and then he’d said, not meeting her eyes: “Because I’m judgmental. Sometimes, I look at someone and immediately form an opinion of them, even though I don’t know them. I don’t know who they are, I don’t know what they’ve been through. I don’t know what they’re _going _through. It makes me an asshole, and I wish I wouldn’t do it. I did it to you, Beverly. I wish I hadn’t.”

Beverly had stared, open-mouthed. “Oh. Ok. Thanks, Stanley.”

“I’m sorry,” he’d said. “For believing all those _things_ people say about you. I know they’re not true. And I think you’re really cool, even if you don’t think so. I just wanted you to know that.”

Bev had smiled at him, then, a real, genuine smile. “Thank you. I’m sorry, too. For being rude.”

“Don’t be. I’m not worth it.”

Which hadn’t been true then, and isn’t true now.

They’d reached Bev’s apartment complex, and Stan must’ve understood the stony look on her face, because he’d asked:

“Do you want to smoke?”

“You want a _cigarette_?” she’d asked, bemused. He’d shrugged.

“Sure. Why not?” So she’d given him one, and had one herself, and they’d stood out in the moonlight and finished them off, not talking.

And from then on, Stanley Uris had become one of Bev’s favorite people.

She loves these guys. Even when she has to go home and face her father, or go into town and face the rumors, she feels _better _about all of it now. Because she has people in her corner now, people to look forward to seeing every day. Friends to laugh with, and see movies with, and swim in the quarry with. Friends to share stories with, and smoke with, and coast around town with.

Because that’s all Beverly Marsh has ever wanted, really.

Friends.

Bev has a love letter.

Bev has a love letter, which means someone cares about her so much that they wrote it down and gave it to her.

Bev has a love letter, and she feels..._alive._

She sees it when she gets back from the quarry. Whoever had written it had slipped it into the front pocket of her jeans, and she only notices once she gets home. She’s in the bathroom when she takes it out and reads it. It’s on one of those Derry postcards that has the standpipe on it, written in somewhat messy scrawl, and it’s short.

_Your hair is winter fire/_

_January embers/_

_My heart burns there, too._

_Your secret admirer._

January embers.

Bev’s cheeks feel hot.

Someone _wrote _this. For _her._

Oh, oh, oh. Oh, God. Her heart is thumping, so hard she fears her dad might be able to hear it from all the way down the hall. Her face is pink, and her breathing is shallow, and every one of her nerve endings is on _fire_. She feels important. She feels seen. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt anything like this in her life, except for maybe when Bill kissed her. But that had been acting, a scene on a stage, and this, this, _this_ is so much more _personal._

The question nags at her, now: Who wrote it?

Definitely not Richie, that’d be weird. Not Mike, he’d said just yesterday that Beverly is like a sister to him. Not Stan (Bev can’t see him writing a love poem, even _if _he liked her), not Eddie, no way. Probably not Ben, though Bev wouldn’t mind it if it _was _him. But she’s not sure if he sees her that way.

_You know who you want it to be. You’ve wanted it to be him since the third grade._

It has to be Bill, doesn’t it? God, she _wants_ it to be Bill. He seems like someone who would be good at expressing his feelings through words, and Bev knows that he likes to write, journaling little ideas down in a moleskin notebook while they’re in the Barrens or at the diner. It would make sense if he wrote Bev a poem to tell her how he feels.

Oh my God. It’s totally Bill. It _has _to be.

And while the idea that Ben might’ve written it is enticing as well, Bev feels that Bill is more likely. They’ve known each other for longer, and he’s always saying that poetry is a beautiful way to say what you really feel, even if Richie calls him a sap for saying so. And, she wants it to be Bill. Maybe she’s a little selfish in wishing who her secret admirer could be, but it’s not like he’s coming forward to admit who he is, right? She’s allowed to speculate.

So she will. She’ll keep speculating. It’s her right.

She feels so warm inside, so _good_ about herself, which is something she never experiences. She wants to feel this way forever.

In reality, she feels this way for five minutes, maybe less, because fate is a cruel _bitch_. She’s just clambering out of the bathtub, planning to go back to her room and hide the card somewhere where her father won’t be able to find it, when -

_Beverly, _something whispers, and suddenly her blood is running cold.

The sink. The voice is coming from the _sink._

_Beverly, come here, _it coaxes, and she has no choice but to get closer, peering down into the basin. The drain, once only that, a drain, is now a seemingly bottomless cesspool, and at the bottom of the drain is something that Beverly isn’t sure she wants to see.

“Who are you?” she whispers, curiosity getting the better of her, and the voices shift and change, whipping past her ears and immobilizing her with pure _fear_.

_Veronica Grogan._

_Betty Ripsom._

_Patrick Hockstetter._

_Eddie Corcoran._

_We’re stuck down here, Bevvie. Come help us. We’re floating, Bevvie, and we can’t get out._

Bev’s dreaming. She has to be.

But she finds herself creeping down the hallway, silently unclipping Daddy’s tape measure from his work belt, careful so as not to disturb his slumber. She goes back into the bathroom, shuts the door softly behind her as if in a trance. She pulls the tape out as far as her arm, and lowers it into the drain.

It doesn’t hit a bottom.

She keeps lengthening the tape measure, pulling more and more out, because there _is _a bottom and she _has _to reach it, everything has a bottom, and sooner or later she’ll find it, and then she’ll wake up from whatever freakish nightmare she’s having and go on about her day -

She’s out of tape.

And still no bottom.

Slowly, carefully, she pulls the tape up again, feeding it back into the mouth of the tape measurer, though she feels more terrified than she ever has in her life.

Just at the end, the tape snags. Catches on something. She wrenches it out of the drain to see that the end of the tape is hooked on some kind of greasy rope. Something hairy, something covered in _blood._

Beverly knows that the hair is her hair, the strands she’d hacked off her head in her fit of emotions, and the blood is her blood, the blood she’s been afraid of since even before she first got it, because blood means _womanhood, _and womanhood means all sort of things, things Beverly doesn’t want, not ever.

She yanks the tape free, and sets it to the side of the sink.

And the hair suddenly comes to life. A tendril whiskers out, wraps itself around Beverly’s hand, and then another comes shooting out of the drain, worming itself through her fingers, and now she’s stuck, caught, and the hair is tightening against her flesh, pulling her closer and closer to the bottom of the sink until all she can see is the inky blackness of the bottomless hole that is the drain, and then more of her hair is snaking across her face, around her head, and she screams, screams for someone, anyone to come help her.

The sink gurgles.

And then all she can see is red.

The blood is warm and sticky, covering her face in its powerful jet, getting in her eyes and in her nostrils, in her ears and down her dress and in her _mouth,_ and she can’t even scream because the metallic liquid is filling her up, blocking her from doing anything.

Somehow, she’s able to wrench herself away, and she slips as she skitters backwards, hitting the wall and sliding down it, gasping for breath, as more and more _blood _gushes from the _fucking drain,_ coating the mirror and the walls, jostling the light fixture from its place on the wall out of sheer force, splattering the tiled floor and leaving dark red spatters all over the poem, _her _poem.

The blood is going to keep coming, it’s going to fill up the bathroom, and then she’s going to drown, she’s going to drown, and then she’ll end up at the bottom of the drain, in the sewers with the missing kids.

She screams again, though with what little voice she has left, it comes out as more of a choked, strangled whimper, and as the blood finally splashes back down and out through the pipes, she finds that making another noise would be impossible, because she has just been scared out of her mind, and she’ll never be any more _afraid _than she is now.

And when Daddy doesn’t see the blood, doesn’t hear the drip, drip, drip of the stuff on the floor, and doesn’t smell the sickly iron scent, Beverly has the worst thought of all.

She’s going crazy.

She’s going _fucking _crazy, and all she can see is red, red, red.

But she isn’t crazy. They’ve all seen something. They all see it, too.

Beverly isn’t crazy, and she’s never been so relieved and yet so terrified at the same time. Because that means this thing is _real,_ and whatever IT is isn’t going to stop unless they do something about it.

Going into Neibolt had been awful. It’s easily become the worst experience of Bev’s life, in more ways than one. It had been scary as hell, fucking _paralyzing,_ but it had also ripped the Losers apart. Now, they’re not hanging out together anymore. It feels _wrong, _like something important has been spoiled, and now there’s no point. Not to mention, Richie and Bill are still at each other’s throats, with seemingly no apology in sight.

And Bev is _angry_. She’d finally found a group of people who _like _her, and now the fucking clown has ruined both their summer and their closeness. It’s like, she gets something nice, something she _lives for_, for once in her _pathetic_ little life, and then it’s taken away. It’s _cruel_.

It’s IT playing tricks on them. Because, of course, this is what IT had wanted, to tear them apart, to separate them from each other. And they’re playing right into IT’s claws.

Something’s going to happen soon, something bad, and then what will they do?

She thinks about this question a lot, mulling over the answer while she cooks dinner, while she smokes on the fire escape. She realizes they’ve got to unify again.

But she _already_ knew that.

She’s grabbing her stuff, a bag of supplies (tape, scissors, flashlight, extra batteries), her cigarettes, her dad’s Swiss Army knife, and easing through the living room, careful not to step on the floorboards that creak, not making a sound as she reaches the door, going to grab the handle -

It’s locked. The door is locked.

There’s a fucking _padlock _on the door.

“Where are you sneaking off to?” a voice from behind her asks, and fleetingly, she thinks it’s the clown, it’s Pennywise, and he’s going to kill her, oh _God -_

“I don’t like you sneaking around without telling me,” her father says from his spot in the chair against the wall. Beverly hadn’t noticed him when she’d stepped into the den, had just assumed that because he wasn’t in his recliner he was asleep in his bedroom, oh God she should never _assume_, should she?

“I - ,” Beverly says, tongue running over her lips. “I was just going out. To see some friends at the - at the arcade.”

Daddy scowls. “Friends?” he asks, and his voice has a dangerous edge to it. He beckons her closer, and she has no choice but to go to him. He takes a hold of her hand and runs his thumb over the top of it, causing her to repress a shudder. She barely succeeds.

“Yeah, just some girls from school,” Beverly lies, hoping he can’t tell. “Jane Simmons, and - and Maggie Ralston, from down the block.”

His lip curls. “Those girls aren’t your _friends_,” he hisses. “They don’t like you, do they? Probably call you all sorts of names, just like everyone else. They call you names, don’t they, Bevvie? Slut? Whore? You aren’t a slut or a whore, are you, Bevvie?”

Beverly swallows. “No, sir. I’m not.”

“Then why do they call you those things?”

“I - ,” she stammers. “I don’t - “

“I went into town the other day,” Daddy says, voice sounding casually plain over a layer of poison. “And people were telling me some _things_ about you. Bad things. Saying you’ve been running around all summer with a group of boys.” Suddenly, his grip is iron.

“These boys - you aren’t doing anything _naughty _with them, are you? Because that’s what people seem to think. You know I worry about you, Bevvie, I worry a lot. Tell me you’re not doing anything _sinful_ with those boys.” The casualty in his tone is gone, and all Beverly can hear is hate.

“No...no, I’m not, Daddy. I’m not, you know I wouldn’t.”

He huffs. “Would I know that? You don’t talk to me much anymore, Bevvie. I’ll tell you what I _do _know. I know what goes through boy’s heads when they look at you. I know _all too well._”

Beverly recoils as he leans closer to her, and the look in his eyes is animalistic, wild, and she hates it, she hates _him, _she hates him for making her feel this way.

“And I found _this_,” he continues, oblivious to Beverly’s disgust and fear. “In your underwear drawer.”

And he’s reaching into his front pocket, and he’s pulling out a familiar piece of paper, stained with dried blood that he can’t see, and Beverly is suddenly, _horribly _aware that this is _it_. He’s taken the one physical thing she has to herself, the one thing she can look at and feel happy about, and he’s not going to give it back.

“Daddy,” she cries, weakly stretching her arms out as if to take it. He pulls it farther away. “It’s nothing. It’s just a poem.”

“It’s a_ love poem_,” he says, voice steely. “From one of those _boys._ Tell me the truth now, Bevvie. Are you screwing just one of these little shits? Or all of them?”

“No,” she chokes. “I’m not, not with any of them, Daddy, _please, _you know I wouldn’t, I _swear._”

“But you hid it in your _underwear drawer,_” he says icily. “Why did you have to hide it _there?_”

Beverly just sobs.

“Bevvie,” he mutters, and his hold on her arm is so tight she fears he’s going to break her wrist. “_Are you still my little girl?”_

And Beverly thinks, _No._

“_What did you say to me?_” he asks, eyes full of fury, and Beverly realizes she’d said it out loud.

Well, there’s no point in stopping now.

“I _said, NO!_” she screams, and with a sudden burst of strength, wrenches herself from his grasp, backing away and rubbing the harsh lines on her forearm. Immediately, he’s on her, pushing her to the floor, that animalistic look back and getting hungrier by the second, like a predator stalking its prey, and he’s reaching for the hem of her dress, lifting it up, up past her knees, even as she’s kicking and flailing -

“_FUCK YOU!_” Beverly yells, and her leg shoots out and nails him right between the legs. He groans, moving off of her to cup himself in his pain, and she scrambles to her feet, smacking him upside the head with a photograph of her mother just for good measure. She dashes down the hall, skidding into the bathroom and slamming the door behind her, and even as she climbs into the bathtub and hides behind the shower curtain, she can hear his heavy footsteps thumping after her, and her heart is pounding along with them.

When he draws the curtain back, she doesn’t have to think about it. She doesn’t even have to hesitate. She smacks him across the face with the lid of the toilet’s water tank. The lid connects with his cheekbone with a satisfying crack, and then shatters as her father crumples to the floor, hitting his head against the tiles.

Beverly steps out of the tub, breathing hard, tears running down her face. Her father’s eyes are closed, and he isn’t moving. He’s out cold. Hell, she can’t even tell if he’s _breathing._

Oh God. Did she kill her father? Oh my God, she’s _killed her father._

If she really has, she doesn’t feel as bad about it as she probably should.

So, what does she do now? She’ll leave Daddy here, find the key to the padlock, and get the fuck out, that’s what she’ll do. She’ll find Bill and the others, and they’ll figure out how to kill this clown once and for all.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. That’s what she’ll do.

Beverly turns around, and is met with a blood-red grin and manic yellow eyes. And then all she sees is black.

When she comes to, she’s in a room, a big room with a high ceiling, and she knows she’s in the cistern. She’s in the belly of the beast, and all the missing kids are floating above her, and she’s going to die here, probably, because she hadn’t been able to get to anyone, because of her _fucking dad._

IT isn’t here. It’s lurking probably, but Bev can’t see it now, and she knows that this could be her only chance.

She starts to run.

And then, all of a sudden, carnival music starts blasting, and the centerpiece of the room lights up, and Pennywise is in there, and it’s dancing, writhing, twisting, and Bev has to get out, she has to get out _now._

IT pounces on her before she can escape through the pipes, and it’s grabbing her, hoisting her up into the air, claws digging into her skin, grinning up at her. Bev has never been more afraid, but she knows she can’t afford to be.

So she paints a picture in her head. A picture of her, with all of her friends, swimming in the quarry. And she doesn’t feel as scared, even while the Devil is staring her right in the eyes.

“_I’m not afraid of you,_” she snarls, and IT glares, and then it’s eyes roll over white, and it’s mouth is opening wide, grotesquely wide, exposing Bev to rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth like a shark’s, but she doesn’t notice that, because deep in the back of IT’s throat are lights, bright lights, and they must be some sort of _deadlights_ _yes they must be they’re deadlights and Bev is floating she’s floating up and up and up_

_She’s dimly aware that she’s suspended in midair, like the rest of the kids, and that IT is leaving._

_And then she’s not aware of anything at all, except for her own mind._

_She can see...she can see so much. She can see everything as if under a microscope, magnified, clearly defined, and so, so bright._

_Her friends are there, in the cistern. But they’re not her friends now, they’re her friends later, they’re her friends in twenty-seven years, when they’ll all have to come back to here, to Derry, to the sewers, and end IT once and for all._

_They all look good as adults. Bill still has that confident look in his eyes, and Ben, Ben looks _great_, and Beverly herself has her hair cut short like it is now. Richie’s still got his big glasses, and Mike looks older in everything but the eyes, which still hold a glimmer of his childhood in them. Eddie looks the same as he does now, almost exactly, but his form is flickering a little bit, winking in and out. Stanley is there, too, but barely. He seems more like a whisper of himself than anything else, and he’s wearing a morose expression on his face, but he’s there, and he’s still got those curls, and he looks how he does now, just taller._

_They’ll have to come back. They will._

_More images are starting to pass through her brain, flashes of things she wishes she could stop seeing. Each one only lasts for a second before moving to the next, but Beverly wants them to stop, they’re so awful. Mike shouting, eyes screwed shut in clear and obvious pain. Bill sobbing, fighting his way through a crowd as he does. Richie screaming, tears streaming down his face, being restrained by two pairs of hands as he tries to run towards something. Eddie, blood dribbling from the corners of his mouth and oozing down his chin, eyes wide and crying. Stanley looking emptier than Beverly has ever seen anyone look, eyes full of tears, hands shaking, lips parted slightly. Ben, Ben sinking into what looks like pure earth, one hand outstretched, sobbing as he tries to stay afloat, mouth filling up with dirt. And Beverly herself, drowning in blood, the same blood that had gushed from her sink, except this time, it’s really going to kill her, and she won’t be able to get out._

_All of these things seem so real. They’re going to happen, oh God, they’re really going to happen. She’s seeing glimpses of the future, and the future is _terrible.

_She has to get out. She’s never going to get out._

_Distantly, as if through a haze, she can feel someone pulling her down. And then_

A pair of lips against her own.

She gasps and suddenly the images are gone, and Beverly Marsh returns to reality.

They’re all here. They came for her. They found her.

Ben rushes forward and hugs her, tears spilling down his cheeks, and Beverly realizes that he was the one who had kissed her.

Which means -

Oh.

_Oh._

“January embers,” Bev gasps, and she feels stupid for having not understood before.

Ben pulls back and stares at her with wide, shocked eyes. “My heart burns there, too,” he says, and then he starts to smile, and it’s the most beautiful thing Bev has ever seen in her life, and she smiles back.

“Jesus _fuck_,” Richie says shakily, relief evident in his voice, and he wraps his arms around both of their shoulders, slotting himself in between them, and the others crowd around them, too, and Bev knows that at least right now, it’s going to be alright.

They’ll be ok.

“I saw all of us,” she says, staring down at her hands, the same hands that helped kill a clown that eats children, that bashed her father in the head with a toilet tank lid. “Back in the cistern. But we were older. Like, our parents’s ages.”

“Am I still handsome as an adult?” Richie jokes, and Eddie giggles. Bev smiles.

“You grow into your looks.”

“What the fuck does _that _mean?” he says, grinning.

“What about me?” Stan asks, avoiding smiling too hard so as not to disturb the bandages wrapped around his head. “What do I look like?”

_You’re barely there, barely there at all,_ Beverly doesn’t say.

“The same,” she says, instead. “Just...taller.”

“So, do you think this means that it’s going to happen again?” Mike asks, shifting in his position on the ground. “We didn’t finish this, and we’ll have to come back?” He looks afraid, and the others looks horrified at the prospect, too.

“I don’t know,” Bev says. “I don’t think what I saw was the exact _future. _I think it was more like...possible endings. What-ifs.”

But somehow she knows, deep down, that they’ll come back. IT will make them. Derry will call for them, and they’ll have to come home.

“I think we killed IT,” Ben says confidently. “It looked pretty dead to me.”

Stanley stands, clutching a shard from a glass bottle. “We should swear it. A blood oath. Swear that if IT isn’t dead, and if IT comes back,” His voice quivers. “We’ll come back, too. And we’ll kill it.” And he cries out softly as he slices into his palm.

When it’s Bev’s turn, she barely even winces. She grasps Bill’s hand, and Ben’s, too.

No one says anything. Everything has already been said. But a silent promise passes through them all.

The Losers Club won’t stop until IT is gone.

One by one, they all leave. Bev says goodbye to Stan, to Mike, to Eddie, to Richie. Doesn’t say goodbye to Ben until she kisses him on the cheek and squeezes his palm, even though it’s sweaty and they’ve both got open cuts, because somehow she knows this is the last time she will ever see him. At least, for now.

And then it’s just her and Bill, just like it was on stage, when they had their first kiss.

And Bev kisses him again, soft and slow and deep, and it feels good. It feels how it’s supposed to. It feels how it did in third grade, but better, more amplified.

Yet a part of her can only feel guilt. Because Bill wasn’t the one who’d poured his heart out to her in a poem, the poem that had made Bev feel so good. And part of her wants to say bye to Bill and run after Ben instead, to hug him or kiss him again, or _something._ But another part of her thinks she should just stay where she is.

Feelings are _confusing_.

And even as she leaves Bill, too, she feels like she’s making a mistake. Like she’s running away from something, Bill, Ben, her friends, all of it. She’s running away from everything and towards nothing, and that’s exactly what she doesn’t want to do.

_So, _Bev thinks as she wheels her bike down the street, where the children skip rope in the front lawns and play hopscotch on the sidewalks, happy, free, without a care in the world, because they don’t understand how truly evil this town is. _IT is toying with me now, too. Keeping me away from the people I love._

_Well, that’s ok. Because that dumbass clown might be winning now, but it’ll be crying later._

_It’ll be dying later._

Alvin Marsh is still alive, but Bev’s Aunt Polly has come to get her and take her to Portland. Bev’s been staying at the Derry Townhouse with her while Aunt Polly yells at her brother-in-law and gets all of Bev’s things.

It feels good, to be leaving him behind. It feels relinquishing. It feels _free._

But Bev still doesn’t want to go. Her friends are here, the Losers are here, and they’ve been the best thing in her entire life.

She doesn’t see them again, not after the blood oath. Only Stan, once when she went down to the store for milk. He’d kissed her in the dairy aisle, but it hadn’t been a romantic kiss, it had been a kiss full of platonic love, and care. It had been soft and short and it had been a bittersweet goodbye. She’d hugged him close, he’d cried a little bit, and then she’d left.

_(If she’d known that that would be the last time she’d ever see him, she would’ve never let him go.)_

Bev feels weird not seeing the others, but Aunt Polly doesn’t like her to go out on her own much, and she never really gets the chance, anyway. Even when she feels that she _could _just bike down the road and visit Mike on his farm, or drop by the library and check if Ben might be there so she can see him one last time, something stops her. The time isn’t right or something, and, hell. She’ll probably be seeing them all in thirty years, anyway. If Derry wants her to see one of her friends, they’ll bring her friends to her.

On Bev’s final full day in town, she says goodbye to one last person.

She’s all packed and ready to go, her few things jammed into the back of Aunt Polly’s station wagon. They’re booked for one more night in the Townhouse, and tomorrow they leave, bright and early, and Bev won’t look back.

It’s odd. She’s never known a life without her father, without Derry, and now she’s leaving to start a new one.

The back of the Townhouse is dark and quiet. The only things behind the building is a Dumpster surrounded by flies and puddles of unrecognizable slop, maybe water, maybe alcohol, maybe piss, ‘cause sometimes the bums hang back here. But tonight, under a clear black August sky, no one is there but Bev. She’s enjoying a cigarette, all alone.

Until she isn’t alone.

From her spot just around the corner, she can see the front of the motel perfectly. She can just make out a dark shape approaching, and when it passes underneath the streetlamp, the illuminated curls and the glare from the glasses tell Bev exactly who it is.

“Trashmouth,” she breathes, and she runs out into the parking lot to meet him.

“Bev,” Richie says back, and for once there’s no glee in his eyes. He drops his bike gracelessly to the asphalt. He looks sad. He’s doing something Bev has only seen him do once or twice before. Richie is crying.

“Oh, Richie,” Bev says sympathetically, voice hoarse, and she gathers him up in her arms and holds him tight. He wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her hair, breathing shakily.

“Gonna miss you, Bevvie-from-the-levee.”

“I’ll miss you, too, Richie-from-the-ditchie.” She pulls back, but doesn’t let go of his shoulders.

“One more smoke?” she asks. “For old times’s sake.” And he follows her back behind the Townhouse, wiping his eyes from under his glasses and gratefully accepting a Winston from Bev.

“Tastes good like a cigarette should,” he remarks as Bev lights him.

“Does it?” she asks.

“Bet your fur it does.”

They don’t talk, rare for one of their smoke breaks. Just sit quietly with their backs against the wall, legs outstretched over the dirty cement (if Eddie were here he’d be ragging on them for it, no doubt), and Bev can’t help but be reminded of the first time they ever smoked together, that day at school.

“You remember that?” she asks, and Richie glances up at her. “When we smoked that day at school.”

“Of course,” Richie says. “Hard to forget.”

“Why didn’t we ever do that again?” Bev asks, but she knows the answer.

“Wasn’t the right time,” Richie mumbles, exactly what Bev had been thinking, and she sighs, a cloud of smoke blooming in front of her face.

“You never told me why you were out there that day,” she says, facing him. “Why you were crying.”

“I told you,” he whispers. “I wasn’t crying. Just had something in my eye.”

“Richie,” she says. “It’s ok.”

He blinks at her, and then looks away, taking a drag from his cig. “No, it’s not.”

“You can tell me anything,” she says, and he looks at her, and he looks so _pained._

“I’m your _friend_, Richie.”

“Not this,” he says miserably. “I couldn’t tell you this.” And Bev realizes that she should probably leave it at that.

“Ok,” she says, instead of pushing further, and she sees relief flash in Richie’s eyes. “You know I love you, Ditchie.” And she does.

“I love you, too, Miz Marsh,” he says, smiling sadly. And he does.

They finish their cigarettes in peace, and then Bev hugs him one last time.

The next day, she gets in the car with Aunt Polly, and by the time they arrive at Polly’s house in Portland, Beverly Marsh can’t even remember where she’d come from.

The next chapter of Bev’s life passes in a blur. She settles in Portland (hardly remembers where she used to be), goes to school (the people here don’t call her names, and _that _she remembers), makes new friends (but they don’t feel right, and she doesn’t understand _why_), dates some boys (though none of them are all too exciting). She doesn’t think about her dad, graduates high school, goes to college in Cincinnati for fashion design, and starts to try to make a name for herself.

Life is good, at least during the daytime.

But at night, Bev is plagued by nightmares, terrible, terrible nightmares. She can never remember them exactly when she wakes up, but she can recall flashes of things, of people being tortured in horrible ways. A sewer grate, a carnival, a bathtub, a postcard, covered in brown spots, a bright red balloon swelling to burst. People screaming, people crying, always the same people, and when she wakes Bev can remember nothing about them except that she feels like she knows them, or _knew_ them, once upon a time. The dreams are a nightly occurrence, and always leave Bev waking up in a cold sweat with a racing heart.

They’re only at night, so she tries to ignore them. She throws herself into her work, passes every class, passionately works for everything as best as she can. Her professors like her, her classmates like her. Everything seems to be looking up.

And then she meets Tom.

He’s not so bad at first, not bad at all. He’s in one of her classes, and they sit right near each other. He greets her on the first day with a, “Hi, I’m Tom Rogan. You?” and a handsome smile, and Bev feels an instant attraction to him.

She later looks back on it and wonders if she was so quickly drawn to him because of his looks, or because he’d reminded her of her father, even then.

After a couple of months, Tom asks her out to dinner. She says yes, and then they go many times after that. They’re almost _popular_ at school, something Beverly never thought she’d be. The teachers like them because they’re both hard-workers, and people treat them nicely and tell them they’re perfect for each other, that their love is to die for.

Yes, Beverly supposes she loves him. Even though her heart is telling her there’s someone else out there for her, and she just hasn’t met them yet. Or maybe she already has and they’re waiting for her, but. She loves Tom.

She loves Tom, even when he hits her for the first time. She pushes him away in her shock, says she’ll leave him if he does that to her, and he apologizes, says he only did it because he was drunk, begs for her forgiveness, tells her he loves her, and promises never to do it again. And Beverly stays, because she loves him, she stays with him when he hits her again, and she stays with him when he does it a third time, and by the time he starts taking out his belt, Beverly doesn’t even think she _could _leave anymore.

When he asks her to marry him, she says yes reflexively, afraid of what the consequences for saying no might be.

They get married in Vegas (the welts on her arms never really go away, so she wears a long-sleeved wedding dress, even though it’s July), they get a house in Chicago (he forbids her from going out with friends unless he’s going with her), they start their business, begin to build their empire (he makes all the decisions, and she smiles and nods in the background), and they start to become fashion giants, so everyone knows the name Rogan & Marsh Industries (the way he tells her he worries about her as he smacks her across the face, as he forcefully unhooks her bra and pushes her roughly onto the bed, reminds her of her father).

Beverly is happy. She truly is. She’s rich, she’s successful. She has a big house, and lots of friends, and a husband who loves her. She knows he loves her, because he tells her so, so it must be true. The two of them costume shows, festivals, celebrities, movies.

(God, she’s got to get _out. _How the fuck is she ever going to get _out?_)

Beverly Marsh is happy.

_(Help me. Help me.)_

And when she’s thirty-nine and she wakes up, in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, to pick up a call from a number she doesn’t recognize but answers anyway, many things start to make sense.

She’s _not_ happy. How could she be? She has to go back, has to go back to the blood and the clown and the fear and the deadlights and _Derry._

But she wasn’t happy before, either. She hasn’t been for a long, long time.

Twenty-seven years, in fact.

The nightmares are realer now. She knows where they come from. And Beverly is very, very scared that they are going to come true.

It’s over.

Oh God, it’s over.

How can it be over?

It shouldn’t be, but it _is, _and now the surviving members of the Losers Club have been left to pick up the pieces.

They stumble to the quarry, covered in dirt and grime and greywater and blood and God knows what else. The walk there is quiet. They don’t pass anyone on the way. If they did, who knows how that someone might react to five grown adults, four of whom are pretty well known in their respective industries, one of which is the local librarian, covered in shit and traipsing off to the old quarry.

Probably not well.

Oh God. _Five _grown adults. This is all wrong. It’s so _wrong._ They’re not five, they’re _seven. It was always meant to be seven._

Bev jumps in first. She’d lost her jacket somewhere between entering the Neibolt house and running out of it as it collapsed behind her, so she just unlaces her boots, takes a running start, and jumps. Bev jumps in first just like she once did all those years ago.

The water is bitterly cold. It’s like swimming in a cooler. Bev is too emotionally wrecked to register the shock, the goosebumps rising on her flesh.

The others join her, each one looking grimmer than the one before. Richie is the last one to jump, and Bev had almost expected him to turn around and go dashing back to the house the second they were all in the water.

“You know what Eddie would say if he were here?” Ben says from next to her, eyes red.

“Probably he’d freak out on us for splashing around in all this dirty water,” Bill answers, and his voice is hoarse and choked.

“Yeah,” Bev says. She smiles slightly, but it quivers. “He’d be telling us we’d all get streptococcus, or something ridiculous like that.”

“He always joined us, though,” Mike says softly. “Even though the water was dirty, he came in with us. Him and...and _Stan._” Bev’s throat starts to close up a little more, then.

They’re _gone_.

“Right, Rich?” Bill asks, and they all turn to him, for a joke, for a grin, for some reassurance. But Bev knows that that’s not going to happen. Richie is just...he’s crying. He’s got his face in his hands, and he isn’t wearing his glasses, and he’s literally _weeping._

“Oh God, _Richie_,” Bev utters, voice thick with tears, and she’s the first to wade over to him, resting her head on his shaking shoulder and crying with him. The others join them. This scene is familiar, and Bev remembers that they once all crowded around Bill when they were kids like this, when they’d killed IT the first time.

IT’s cruelest trick of all was refusing to stay dead.

“I’m sorry,” Richie chokes. “_I’m sorry_.” And he starts to sob, and it’s the worst sound Bev has ever heard in her life.

“Shhh,” she says, rubbing his back, and he cries some more. They all do. They all keep crying until Richie sniffles and says,

“I don’t have my glasses on, so I don’t know who you people are, but thank you. _Thank you so much._” Bev giggles in spite of herself, and the others join.

“No, seriously,” Richie says. “I can’t find my glasses. I thr - I...dropped them. On accident.”

“Shit, seriously?” Bill asks, and then they’re all breaking off to look for them, and _God, why _is this happening right now, this shouldn’t be _happening, _Eddie is _dead_ and this is just too _surreal_.

Bev scans the water until she spies a shape at the bottom. “Look,” she says, pointing. “They’re down there.”

“They are?” Ben asks, peering down, and Bev nods.

“Yeah. I’ll get them.”

“No, it’s ok, I can - “ she hears Ben say, but she’s already ducking underwater.

Her fingers enclose on Richie’s glasses, cracked in the lenses and chipped at the edges, and Ben’s fingers wrap around hers. They meet eyes in the water, just for a moment, but in that moment there is so much. It’s like the moment in the cistern when they were kids, or the moment just an hour or so ago when Bev had fought her way out of the blood, and she wants to stay in this moment forever.

But she knows it’s not the right time.

She swims back up, breaking the surface, but still keeping hold of Ben’s hand, the glasses clutched between their palms.

“I love you,” Ben says, and Bev melts.

It was always Ben. There really was never anyone else. Not Bill. Not _Tom. _Just Ben.

“I love you, too,” Bev murmurs, kissing his knuckles. But she steps back, just a little.

“But we can’t do this right now,” she says, glancing over at Richie. “It’ll be too much for him. You understand.”

“Yes,” Ben says. “I know. _God, _I know. It isn’t fair.” He looks at Richie sadly. “Go,” he says, and Bev takes the glasses and goes to join her best friend.

“Hey,” she says softly, handing him his glasses. He takes them, but doesn’t put them on. Just stands there, staring at them.

“Hi,” Richie says. God, he sounds so empty.

“Richie. Richie-from-the-ditchie,” she says, smiling a little. She’d do anything to see him smile back. He looks up at her.

“Bevvie-from-the-levee,” he says, but he doesn’t smile. Why should he?

“I,” Richie says suddenly, voice tender. He breaks eye contact again. “I loved him. I was - I was _in love _with him, I think, or, no, I _know_, and I just - “ He swallows.

“I know,” Bev says sorrowfully. “I know, Richie.”

“You do?” Richie asks, eyes shining with _something_, some sort of emotion that Bev can’t place. “You don’t hate me?”

“I could never hate you, Rich,” Bev says, shaking her head. “Just like you could never hate me.”

His lips quirk a little at that. “When did you realize?”

“I think I only really figured it out once we came back. You used to tease him all the time when we were younger, but I never thought that you...I never thought anything of it.”

Richie nods, and she can tell he’s just barely fighting off a fresh wave of tears.

“He loved you, too,” Bev says, and she knows that it’s true. “He did, Richie.”

“I _know_,” Richie sobs. “And I wish I didn’t. It just makes it worse.”

“Yeah,” she says, stroking his back again.

“_God, _Bev, I - I loved him so much, and now he’s just, he’s..._gone._” And he breaks down again, shoving his face into Bev’s shoulder.

Richie, he’s...he’s...

Broken.

And, without even registering what she’s saying: “I feel like this is my fault.” She’s crying too, now. Richie sniffles.

“Bev, it’s not. If anything, it’s my - “

“Don’t you _dare _say it’s your fault, Richie Tozier,” she interrupts. “It isn’t, ok? It is _not_ your fault.”

“How can it be yours?” Richie asks, and she knows that he still blames himself, and he’ll go on blaming himself forever.

“The deadlights...they warned me about Eddie...I could’ve done something...I could’ve - _saved _him, or...” She sobs.

“No,” Richie says, standing upright to wrap her in a bear hug. “You couldn’t’ve known, Bev. You said it yourself. The deadlights,” he says, and pauses, licking his lips, and Bev wonders briefly what IT had showed him when he was caught. “They don’t always show the exact future. Just what-ifs.”

“Richie,” Bev cries. “Richie, I’m so _sorry_.”

Richie nods, and he’s never looked more empty, more depressed, and Bev wants to scream because Richie shouldn’t look like this, doesn’t deserve to look like this, because the love of his life is fucking _gone_. “Me too.”

They hug for a while, as they calm down. Ben and Bill and Mike are half-heartedly splashing each other, clearly trying to add _some _form of light-heartedness to this terrible situation. Ben catches her eye, and smiles softly, his eyes looking at her lovingly, and Bev laughs just a little bit and waves.

Richie pulls back and follows her gaze, grinning just a little, and _God, _that’s all Bev needed to see from him. “So,” he says, and just a little bit of his usual self is seeping back into his eyes. “Haystack, huh?”

Bev smiles. “Yeah.” And then: “God, I’m sorry, Rich, I’m rubbing it in your face.”

“No,” he says, looking at her. “It’s ok, Beverly. You guys deserve each other. You have since you met, I think.”

“Thanks, Rich,” she says. “I love you, Ditchie.”

“Love you, too, Miz Marsh. Now, go on. You don’t want to keep Handsome Hanscom waiting.”

“You’re right,” Bev says, and she kisses him on the cheek. “It’s gonna be ok, Rich.”

“Sure,” Richie says, but his eyes just look so _finished_.

Ben takes her hand when she comes back, and he blushes just a little, even from that, and Bev has missed him so, _so _much.

“Is he ok?” Ben asks. “I mean, I know he isn’t, but...”

“He’s...he’s grieving,” Bev says. “We all are. And I know this is hard for him, harder than it is for us. I think he’ll be ok. Eventually. But it might take a while.”

Ben nods. “Well, we’d better be with him every step of the way, right?”

“Yeah,” Bev says. “We’d better be.”

“Beverly,” Ben breathes, and the way he says her name is filled with so much love that Bev wants to scream like a lovesick teenager.

No one has ever said her name before with that much _love_ in their voice.

“Ben,” she whispers back. “I love you. I love you so much.”

“_God, I love you, too,_” Ben says, and a few tears trail their way down his face. “Sorry, I just. I never thought I’d hear you say those words, Bev.”

“I know,” Bev says, crying a little, too. “Sorry it took so long.”

Ben shakes his head. “No,” he says, tilting her chin softly with his fingers and gazing into her eyes. “It didn’t.”

He kisses her. And that kiss is a promise. An apology, for everything they’ve been through, for all of it. It’s _love. _And Bev knows that this is what she’s been running towards her whole life.

She’d found love with her friends. She’d found love with Ben.

She rests her forehead against his, and she hopes beyond hope that this time, they can all stay happy.

It’ll be hard, it’ll be so fucking hard. But they’ll be ok.

They will.

**Author's Note:**

> oof that hurt to write
> 
> anyway. ben hanscom is a lesbian because only lesbians could write poetry that beautiful.


End file.
